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He's your best friend, He's your guardian, He's your dog - He is King. King has been around since the very beginning of Ness' life, as evidenced by the image Ness glimpses after hearing the first piece of melody and the flashback right before entering Magicant. However, this also means that age is catching up to him and he has become a little stubborn and a little bit cranky but that is the privilege of age (One that I'm certain you'll make use of when you're over the hill.) King briefly shows his loyalty to Ness in the beginning of the game by adventuring with him and also briefly shows his strong need for self-survival. Sarcastic on the outside, yet caring on the insides...Yes, King was a great character to have on your team... What am I getting at, you ask?

Simple - it would have been seriously awesome if King was a permanent character that you could control in battle and would actually learn skills as he leveled up. Now, having King as a character would mean he would have to have weapons, equipment, and special attacks. I'm going to briefly elaborate on his special attacks. He could have a wacky assortment of attacks such as "Mail Man chase", which shows an animation of King chasing around a mail man and then the two of them running into the enemy at the last minute. There could be a special attack called "I just buried you in a hole, sorry" (The animation is self explanatory) which could later power up to become the less apologetic attack "I just buried you in a hole! Hah!" He could have a skill called "Run around in a circle three times" that would mysteriously increase his PP. Also, Ness and King could have a combo attack called "Dog Chuck" where Ness tosses King at an enemy. Who wants to have dogs thrown at them? I know I don't!

When it comes to equipment, his main armor would be Fur. In different department stores you would be able to buy brushes that would permanently upgrade his armor. For example, King's armor would start out as "Disease ridden fur". You would use "Cheap Brush" on King, and his armor would change to "Runaway Dog Fur". So you go on through the game, buying new brushes and getting fur like "Okay Fur," "purty fur," "Shiny fur", "golden Fur", "Glow in the Dark fur". His final armor would be called "The fur of Sirius" and you'd have to use a Dogstar Brush which is a 1/128 item dropped by the Sweltering Snowman. He wouldn't have weapons, kind of like you know who - Voldermort. He would have collars that could raise his defense and could sometimes give him extra elemental defenses, etc. etc. You could also equip a dog shirt (Have you seen those in stores before? You know what I mean, right?) But that would lower his defenses because he doesn’t like dog shirts. It's also possible that King could have a sniff ability that that looks at the statis or data of the monsters that Jeff's Spy doesn’t cover, such as the special attacks they know or something.

Now, having King as a permanent character would mean that some slight changes to the general mechanics of Earthbound would have to be made. Most of the time when there's dialogue, King could just chime in with a sarcastic comment or two. In fact, having King around would probably greatly enhance all of the dialogue in earlier Onnet, since Ness is otherwise alone in his adventure. The Hotel system would have to be changed - dogs can't stay in Motels. Every time you'd check in at a hotel, King would say a random comment that basically amounts to "...If you'll be needing me, I'll be circled up sleeping behind the hotel, probably in the rain..." And he briefly leaves your party and you have to talk to him again to have him join your party again (He'd inform you that he had a pretty good rest, too.) Now, if you tried to walk too far from the hotel and you were just traveling with Ness alone, you'd get a message saying (...Gee... I shouldn't leave King behind...) and you'd automatically take a few steps backwards, and you'd get that message again and again until you King rejoined your party. If other people were in you party, you'd get a message like "Shouldn't we go and get your dog, Ness?" Also, besides having those relaxing butterflies around, there would be cats for King to chase that would fully recover him and him and Poo.

Some changes to the plot would have to be made, too. The plot point with the Happy Happyist would have to be rewritten completely - after all, once Carpainter saw how awesome your dog was, he'd stop fighting and give you a medal or something. Also, the old legend would say that the world would be saved by "three boys, a girl, and a dog..." Speaking of dogs, the story context of the pyramid would have to change, too. It's pretty common knowledge that the Sphinx was the evil lord of cats who briefly enslaved humanity, as revealed in the 2002 Disney Movie "Cats and Dogs." (Note: The movie didn’t indicate the Sphinx as a leader, but historical evidence later proved this.) There would probably a whole bunch of evil cat demons that attack you in the pyramid and the Sphinx would come alive and be a one on one boss battle between King and the Sphinx. Also, in the end, Paula would falter at the last minute and King would jump in and finish the prayers, thereby saving the world and the world, in gratitude, would make him a monarch, true to his name.

Now, you may be saying to yourself, "This stuff all makes perfect sense - why didn't Nintendo just insert these features into the game?" The answer may shock you. I emailed Itoi about this subject and I got a very fiery response detailing his hatred against dogs. Here's an exert:

"In fact, I didn't even wanna put King in the game, but all the other guys were like "Come on, Itoi! Every boy needs a dog!' So, I put the mutt into the game; but let me tell you, I was not happy. You see, earlier in my life, I accidentally walked into a movie theatre and the things I saw really disturbed me. When I walked out of the theatre, I found out that my entire family had been eaten by dogs in my absence. Later on when Dogs declared war on Japan, I went off to fight them for five years, and when I came back I had even less respect for dogs. You want King to be a permanent character? Sure. Fine. It's a great idea. It just didn't happen that way, is all..."

As you can see, the people at Nintendo are vehemently against dogs. Normally Nintendo has a squeaky clean reputation, but there's one minority they try to oppress more than any others: dogs. It makes me sick. Really sick. I think we should do something about this. In fact, I have a plan -let's boycott Earthbound! Every time you play to the part where King leaves the part, throw your controller to the ground and shout "NO, Nintendo, NO!" and grab at your SNES, turn it off, then yank the cords out and throw it out a window or an endless canyon, whichever is easier for you. (Note: fans might need to stock up on loads of SNES and copies of Earthbound.) After the cursed cartridge is disposed of, write a very angry letter to Nintendo detailing why the world would be a better place if a fictional dog in an old Super Nintendo game would join your team permanently. Maybe throw some graphs in there, and draw a picture of them and say they dress sharply. But they probably won't re-issue Earthbound with the corrected content unless you go to your state senator and get a signature from them. If you don't know how to find your state senator, place a lot of traps and bear traps around local taverns in your area - chances are one of them is a senator. (Note - If you don't live in America, my mind of limited and generally poor education can only assume a large mammal acts as an overlord in small sections of land in your country. Go to them and give them special offerings, and like bow down and do that "I'm not worthy" motion Dr. Wily does at the end of every Mega Man game, and get their written signature or paw print.)

Oh, Nintendo! How foolish you are! Did you really think you could get away with having an awesome character only in the game for a couple of minutes? Did you really think that people would take that sitting down? Did you really think that the dogs in the world wouldn't lead a revolution against you in response to your discrimination of dog characters in RPG? No, Nintendo didn't. The upper fat cat executives (CATS!? NOW IT MAKES SENSE!) thought they could just throw what ever crap at us that they wanted. However, Nintendo's time is over! Video gamers far and wide, video gamers of any console following, take up to arms! Grab weapons, grab torches, grab everyone in your town and march towards Nintendo of America! Together we can send the giant toppling down into a really unpleasant puddle of mud! Come on now, I want to see a mob! Who taught you jerks how to riot? Let's have a chant!